Hunting for the best cassoulet

“On the heels of your blog entry “Longing for Texas Barbeque”, all I could think about all day long was my favorite cold weather entree, cassoulet. Where are your suggestions in SF/NB for my favorite dish?”

It may be a cold-weather dish, but it’s never too warm for cassoulet. In fact, in San Francisco even if it gets up to 80 degrees during the day, it nearly always cools down to the 50s in the evening, so this classic French dish becomes a year-round staple.

Just to illustrate how much I love cassoulet, let me share this story. More than a decade ago I went to France with Madeleine Kamman and three other food professionals. We cooked together at Madeleine’s home in Annecy for about a week and then took another week to travel.

Each of us picked where we wanted to go, so we ended up circling the country. My choice was to drive to Carcassonne to taste what cassoulet was like in its native habitat. We got up early, but it was still was a six-hour trip. We didn’t get inside the fortified walls of the city until after the traditional lunch hour and most of the restaurants were closed.

Madeleine found a woman who had made this dish every day for decades and she agreed to reopen so we could taste the cassoulet, which was always on the stove. With its chunks of duck, sausage, beans and meat, it came out so steamy and rich that we sat for about a half an hour before we could really dig in. I have long forgotten the name of the place, but I’ll always remember the smells that engulfed us as we sat down in the small, dank dining room and relaxed as we savored the generous pot of bubbling, rich cassoulet.

It’s the time, the place and the effort to get there that makes this the version I hold up as the standard. I’m not sure anyone has matched it, but some have been really good.

Here are five of my favorites; please chime in if you have other places so I can continue my quest.

Eloise, which I reviewed recently in Sebastopol offers a rich, stewy cassoulet with plump confit duck leg, a rich square of pork belly, coins of beef and garlic sausage and beans, of course, mixed with a rich sauce and vegetables.

Chapeau offers a cassoulet de Toulouse with braised lamb shoulder and confit duck and sausage.

The cassoulet at Bistro Jeanty in Yountville is distinguished by the smoky qualities of apple-smoked bacon.

Laurent Manrique has a talent producing some of the earthier French dishes, and cassoulet at Cafe de la Presse is a good example, offered every Thursday.

Few restaurants evoke the French feel better than Le Central; the food can be uneven but the cassoulet is always good and at $18.50, it’s one of the best values in the city.